Real Science - news and science teaching resources

New window on solar energy

Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a better way to get energy from the sun.

10-July-2008

Thumbs-up to Einstein

Extreme star system supports general theory of relativity.

3-July-2008

Bird tree of life redrawn

The biggest ever study of bird genes has redrawn their tree of life - and thrown up a whole lot of surprises.

26-June-2008

Lizards pull a wheelie

Lizards get up on two legs in the same way that bikers do a wheelie. And they do it deliberately, say Australian scientists

13-June-2008

Behind the mask

Scientists have been probing the living brain to find out what is happening when we are aware of some sounds and mask out others - "the cocktail party effect".

9-June-2008

Mountain ranges rise rapidly

The Andes Mountains went through a spurt in growth that doubled their height in a far shorter time than was thought possible, according to new research.

5-June-2008

Cool bacteria

Scientists have discovered a new species of bacteria that has been buried in a Greenland glacier for 120,000 years. It is still alive.

3-June-2008

Giant flying reptiles liked to walk

The largest flying flesh-eaters ever seen on Earth walked on their hind legs and grabbed their prey by bending down and snatching it up in their enormous bills.

27-May-2008

First dinosaur tracks ever seen in Arabia

Scientists have found the first dinosaur tracks on the Arabian Peninsula. They belong to a large ornithopod dinosaur, and there are also signs of sauropods walking together along a Mesozoic mudflat.

20-May-2008

Scientists solve bird beak mystery

A team of mathematicians and engineers have shown how shorebirds use their long, thin beaks to defy gravity and get food into their mouths.

15-May-2008

The distant universe and the English spy

Astronomers on a mountain-top in Chile, where scenes for the next James Bond movie are being filmed, have been spying on the distant universe.

12-May-2008

New light on earliest Americans

The remains of a dozen huts in a peat bog 500 miles south of Santiago have provided new evidence of the earliest human settlement in the Americas.

8-May-2008

Early on Wednesday morning NASA’s Swift satellite detected an explosion from deep space that was so powerful its afterglow could be seen by the naked eye. But the explosion happened halfway across the visible universe.

21-March-2008

Coral reefs in acid oceans

Carbon emissions from human activities are not just heating up the world. They are changing the ocean’s chemistry. This could soon be fatal to coral reefs.

14-Dec-2007

Modern humans evolving fast

New research shows that humans have been evolving rapidly for the past 40,000 years. This challenges the widespread belief that human evolution has slowed to a crawl or even stopped.

10-Dec-2007

Big bang for flowers

The Tree of Life for flowering plants has been drawn using the largest ever set of data.

26-Nov-2007

Foreman in the brain

Scientists have found a master molecule in the brain that runs the show when we learn new information and skills.

21-Nov-2007

Fresh water from the nucleus

Fresh, clean drinking water wherever it is needed would save lives, promote good health and even prevent war. Nuclear power may be the answer.

20-Nov-2007

Giant supernova mystery

SN 2006gy was the brightest supernova astronomers had ever seen. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz think they know what happened.

14-Nov-2007